The blog of fantasy author Shanna Swendson. Read about my adventures in publishing and occasionally life.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

Filling in the Details

I gave myself a morning out because it was the last day the latest Jane Austen adaptation, Love and Friendship (adapted from "Lady Susan"), was going to be in the theater. And I'm glad I went, as it was very well done -- laugh-out-loud funny to the point I'm going to need the DVD to catch all the lines, with some amazing costumes. Plus, the return of the Cold Comfort Farm version of Kate Beckinsale (as opposed to the American action film version).

I also may need to track down the book. I suspect it's available via Project Gutenberg. It's a shorter work rather than a novel, and Austen never submitted it for publication. The credits, in the part where they say "buy the soundtrack on whatever label" said to read the book by Jane Austen, "in which Lady Susan is vindicated." That makes me wonder what they may have changed or left out in the movie.

Now it's back to brainstorming. I did enough yesterday that the plot is starting to come together and I have the major throughline. Now I need to figure out the details. The details are the hard part. When it's still more of a vague idea, it sounds utterly brilliant. Then you start drilling down into the how and why, and it starts to fall apart. So far, my research has paid off because it's given me a lot of ideas and has already filled in some of the "how" stuff. So all that time reading wasn't a waste.

The next real test of the idea will come when it's time to put it in words.